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Aerovy Mobility develops cloud software to support infrastructure for electric aircraft

U.S based com­pa­ny Aerovy Mobil­i­ty, announced this week, it has devel­oped cloud soft­ware to sup­port the infra­struc­ture for eVTOL and Elec­tric Air­craft, reports a press release. This includes plan­ning and oper­a­tional solu­tions.

Aerovy is based at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty in West Lafayette, Indi­ana. Pur­due is renowned for being “a great engi­neer­ing school”, so it is of no sur­prise that post-grad­u­ates have launched the start-up to com­mer­cialise cloud-based solu­tions to assist ver­ti­ports, drone hubs and oth­er sim­i­lar infra­struc­ture to charge elec­tric air­craft.

Nick Gunady, CEO of Aerovy, and PhD can­di­date in Purdue’s School of Aero­nau­tics Astro­nau­tics as well as research assis­tant in Purdue’s Cen­tre for Inte­grat­ed Sys­tems in Aero­space, com­ment­ed, “There is a huge poten­tial with future mobil­i­ty to spur eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in under­served loca­tions because of the reduced cost and dif­fi­cul­ty to trav­el there. Yet, the U.S pow­er grid is not ready to han­dle ener­gy spikes relat­ed to charg­ing elec­tric-pow­ered vehi­cles, espe­cial­ly dur­ing rush hour use.”

Nick Gunady

Gunady cites a paper pre­sent­ed at the 2022 AIAA Avi­a­tion Forum that con­clud­ed tril­lions of dol­lars may be need­ed to enhance infra­struc­ture that trans­mits and dis­trib­utes elec­tric­i­ty.

He con­tin­ued, “The AATLAS plan­ning soft­ware iden­ti­fies loca­tions that would attract the most demand so oper­a­tors would be able to make back their invest­ments quick­ly. It also assess­es the expect­ed usage over time, sim­u­lat­ing charg­ing events minute by minute through­out the day.” Adding, “We can size pow­er gen­er­a­tion and stor­age assets, which enables end users to reduce depen­dence on the grid.”

The Aerovy Mobility’s VEMS oper­a­tional soft­ware auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­nects users with all their assets at infra­struc­ture sites, includ­ing charg­ers and off-grid ener­gy sys­tems.

Gunady remarked, “Cus­tomers will have full con­trol over their infra­struc­ture site with­out phys­i­cal­ly need­ing to be there. We have built automa­tion tools to remote­ly con­nect with the air­craft, charge vehi­cles, min­imise grid cost and dynam­i­cal­ly price with­out any user input.”

The cloud-based soft­ware suite is based on work by Pur­due grad­u­ate and under­grad­u­ate stu­dents who were award­ed the grand prize in a 2022 Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion con­test. Gunady, Akshay Rao, Sai Mudum­ba, See­jay Patel and Ethan Wright won the Smart Con­nect­ed Avi­a­tion Stu­dent Com­pe­ti­tion with their entry “Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty as an Elec­tric Grid Demand Response Asset.” Pur­due Pro­fes­sor and Aerovy Mobil­i­ty Chief Sci­en­tist, Daniel DeLau­ren­tis, along­side asso­ciate, Pro­fes­sor Shaoshuai Mou, advised the team with per­son­nel from GE Aero­space, Amer­i­can Air­lines and San Diego Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.  

Aerovy Mobil­i­ty recent­ly estab­lished a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alta­port, an automa­tion soft­ware com­pa­ny based in Salt Lake City; Electro.Aero, an elec­tric avi­a­tion charg­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny locat­ed in Perth, Aus­tralia; Green­star Avi­a­tion Part­ners, an invest­ment firm based in New York City; and Sky­portz, a devel­op­er of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture based in South Yarra, Aus­tralia.

The Aerovy Mobil­i­ty team, from left, includes See­jay Patel, Austin Lu, Keshav Iyen­gar and Nick Gunady

The com­pa­ny also has been in dis­cus­sions with oth­er OEMS (orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers); air­ports around the world; and major U.S. air­lines. The com­pa­ny has sev­er­al mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing (MOUs) in place. It is plan­ning to raise funds by the end of this year.

Gunady con­clud­ed, “We are look­ing to con­nect with com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als with an inter­est in explor­ing elec­tric infra­struc­ture at exist­ing air­ports or ver­ti­port com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in iden­ti­fy­ing loca­tions to place infra­struc­ture, too.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aerovymobility.com/

(Images: Aerovy Mobil­i­ty)

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